The Turbulent Future of International Relations
Four structural forces will shape the future of International Relations: globalization (but without liberal rules, institutions, and leadership); multipolarity (the end of American hegemony and wider distribution of power among states and non-states); the
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The Turbulent Future of International Relations Michael F. Oppenheimer
Four structural forces will shape the future of International Relations: globalization (but without liberal rules, institutions, and leadership)1 ; multipolarity (the end of American hegemony and wider distribution of power among states and non-states2 ); the strengthening of distinctive, national and subnational identities, as persistent cultural differences are accentuated by the disruptive effects of Western style globalization (what Samuel Huntington called the “non-westernization of IR”3 ); and secular economic stagnation, a product of longer term global decline in birth rates combined with aging populations.4 These structural forces do not determine everything. Environmental events, global health challenges, internal political developments, policy mistakes, technology breakthroughs or failures, will intersect with structure to define our future. But these four structural forces will impact the way states behave, in the
M. F. Oppenheimer (B) Center for Global Affairs, School of Professional Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 C. Ankersen and W. P. S. Sidhu (eds.), The Future of Global Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56470-4_2
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capacity of great powers to manage their differences, and to act collectively to settle, rather than exploit, the inevitable shocks of the next decade. Some of these structural forces could be managed to promote prosperity and avoid war. Multipolarity (inherently more prone to conflict than other configurations of power, given coordination problems)5 plus globalization can work in a world of prosperity, convergent values, and effective conflict management. The Congress of Vienna system achieved relative peace in Europe over a hundred-year period through informal cooperation among multiple states sharing a fear of populist revolution. It ended decisively in 1914. Contemporary neoliberal institutionalists, such as John Ikenberry, accept multipolarity as our likely future, but are confident that globalization with liberal characteristics can be sustained without American hegemony, arguing that liberal values and practices have been fully accepted by states, global institutions, and private actors as imperative for growth and political legitimacy.6 Divergent values plus multipolarity can work, though at significantly lower levels of economic growth-in an autarchic world of isolated units, a world envisioned by the advocates of decoupling, including the current American president.7 Divergent values plus globalization can be managed by hegemonic power, exemplified by the decade of the 1990s, when the Washington Consensus, imposed by American leverage exerted through the IMF and other U.S. dominated institutions, overrode national differences, but with real costs to those states undergoing “structural adjustment programs,”8 and ultimately at the cost of global growth, as states—especially in Asia—increased their savings to self ins
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